beer column

my notes from yesterday's beer column on cbc radio one's on the coast
where i chatted about beer bellies and nutritional value of beer with stephen quinn

Local craft brewers love to
put a list of ingredients on the bottle as evdence that they're making quality
products - - but what you won't find on the bottle is a calorie count.

This topic came up during an off the air conversation Stephen Quinn and I had a little while ago.

Through
his extensive research this fall tasting some of the new craft brews out there he noticed that his pants appeared to be growing tighter, which caused him to wonder how
many calories are in those delicious craft beers anyway.

The internet is full of medical articles
about both the health benefits and health detriments of beer. A couple of
articles that were getting a lot of attention, and I mentioned in a previous beer column, were a University of Wisconson
study that found that Guinness really IS good for you - it "may work as
well as a low dose aspirin to prevent heart clots that raise the risk of heart
attacks" and strokes. Along similar lines, a Harvard study of 70,000 women
ages 25 to 40 found that moderate beer drinkers were less likely to develop
high blood pressure - a major risk factor for heart attack - than women who sipped
wine or spirits. And for the men out there, a study in Finland singled out beer among
other alcoholic drinks, finding that each bottle of beer men drank daily
lowered their risk of developing kidney stones by 40 percent.

However, I urge you to keep in mind that all of the health
benefits claimed in all the articles I found were for moderate beer drinking - 1 or 2
beers a day.

Okay, so beer may actually be good
for you, in moderation, but is it actually nutritious?

I don't have the Canadian numbers, but
the USDA has calculated the nutritional value of beer by the ounce, the gram
and by the can (356 grams/12 ounces) - I'll give you the breakdown by the can
measurement as that I think is the easiest to picture: calories 154, 0 fat, 0
cholesterol, 14 milligrams of salt, which doesn't even register on the daily
value percentage, 96 milligrams of potassium (2% daily value), total carbs 13
grams (4% daily value), protein of 1.6 grams or 3% daily value; 1% of your
daily calcium requirement, 10 % of your vitamin b-6, 1% of b-12 and 5% of your
magnesium. So that doesn't sound bad at all.

By way of comparison, your average can of
cola has 138 calories (a few less), similar sodium, almost no potassium, a
whopping 35 grams of carbohydrates (which is 11% of your daily value), 33 grams
of sugar (versus a misleading zero for beer - beer sugars are measured in
alcohol as opposed to sugar), virtually no protein, and just 2% of your daily
iron... plus it has 29 milligrams of caffeine.

Please keep in mind that those are just
averages. Actual nutritional value of beers varies by ingredients and alcohol content. For example Sierra Nevada's
Summerfest beer, at 5% has 158 calories and 13 grams of carbohydrates. Their
IPA at 6.9% has 231 calories and 20 grams of carbs, and their Bigfoot at 9.6%
has a big 330 calories and 32 grams of carbohydrates (more than double the
calories and carbohydrates for less than double the alcohol).

So what then, is with

beer bellies? Are they caused by beer? Or can we (please, pretty please) point the finger at some other cause?

Besides the high calorie count when you
have more than a beer or two, which is what usually happens at a beer festival,
I think it really comes down to life-style that leads to the "beer
belly". Alcohol lowers blood sugar, which makes you feel hungry. So while
you are drinking an alcoholic beverage or two, you will often become hungry and
want to eat something. If you are out a bar, or at home watching the game, you
don't tend to reach for a salad and nice lean piece of fish. Odds are you eat
something deep fried. Those calories and fats are as much or more to blame for
putting on weight than the beer itself is. Also, while you're sitting around
drinking, you're not burning calories.

A study by Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital
followed 19,000 women over the course of 13 years and charted their weight
gains. The moderate drinkers gained less weight than the tea-totallers and the
heavier drinkers. Blame the food dammit, blame the food, not the beer!

I'm not a nutritionist or a fitness
instructor, but the way to maintain
weight is the very simple formula of getting more exercise and watching what you eat. If you average out the
calories in a beer to 200, according to online calculators it would take the
average person 15 minutes of running to burn those calories, or 45 minutes of
walking. So you can "earn" your beers by hitting the stairs instead
of taking the elevator or escalator. Walk to the pub, and perhaps home
afterwards too. You could work out as many times a week as you go out for
drinks.

Then, rather than eating something deep
fried and fatty when you get hungry while drinking, you could opt instead for a
higher protein/lower carbohydrate food option instead. That way you would feel
full on fewer calories and save your carbohydrate calories for the beer you're
drinking!

I also like to incorporate the "rinse
cycle" when I'm out enjoying a pint or two - for every beer I drink, I
have a glass of water. Not only does this help re-hydrate you, it also acts to
slow your beer drinking down - and if you have one fewer beer while you're out,
you're saving yourself both calories and money.

Beer pick:

Picking up a Driftwood Brewing Lustrum
Anniversary Sour would be calories and money well spent! Pick up a couple - one
to drink now and one to cellar for future enjoyment.

Lustrum is the 4th release in Driftwood’s
Bird of Prey series and named after the Roman word for a five year period, it commemorates
Driftwood’s 5th Anniversary of crafting beer in Victoria.

Aged for over a year in French Oak and fermented
with locally sourced wild yeast and a copious load of black currants, Lustrum
is a complex beer.

And be on the lookout for other cellarable
beers being released – tis the season for barleywines and imperial stouts – two
great beers for cellaring.

i didn't always love beer - there was a time in the distant past where i just didn't have a taste for it. fortunately my taste buds changed just around the time folks started brewing really tasty beer. my love affair with beer began. slowly at first, eventually blowing itself up into my current obsession with all things beer. i really like drinking beer. i also enjoy reading about beer, talking about beer, thinking about beer and watching people brew beer.